Modelling Travel Behaviour with Shared Micro-Mobility Services and Exploring their Environmental Implications
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Date
2021
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Doctoral Thesis
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Abstract
The convergence of recent developments in electrification, connectivity and the sharing economy has enabled several new mobility services to emerge. Among them, shared micro-mobility services (e.g., e-scooters, e-bikes) have seen particularly fast international rollouts. Given their rapid diffusion, effective regulation and integrated transport planning is pertinent. City administrations are further asking how shared micro-mobility services can contribute to increasingly stringent CO2 reduction targets.
Advances in these directions are hindered by our limited understanding of travel behaviour. In particular, we do not yet comprehensively understand who uses shared micro-mobility services and how users choose between these and more established modes (e.g., public transport, private cars).
This thesis contributes by offering some of the first empirical evidence on users, mode choice, substitution patterns and net CO2 emissions of shared micro-mobility services. It goes beyond previous work by presenting comprehensive evidence for several different shared micro-mobility services in a single city, by estimating the first mode choice models between them based on revealed preference data, and by demonstrating how to use emerging data sources such as vehicle and human GPS traces to estimate such models at very high spatiotemporal resolutions.
For Zurich, Switzerland, this dissertation finds that users of shared micro-mobility services tend to be young, university-educated males with full-time employment living in affluent households without children or cars. Mode choice is strongly influenced by trip distance, precipitation and access distance. Shared e-scooters and e-bikes mostly replace walking, cycling and public transport. Hence, they emit more CO2 than the transport mode mix they replace. Personal e-scooters and e-bikes replace car-based modes substantially more often. Hence, they emit less CO2 than the transport mode mix they replace and contribute to making urban transport more sustainable.
These results have implications for research, policy and practice. First, they build the foundation for incorporating shared micro-mobility services into larger transport simulations. This, in turn, allows estimation of their impact at scale and enables testing the effectiveness of policy interventions. Second, this dissertation presents nuanced empirical evidence for city administrations that aim to evaluate how shared micro-mobility services contribute to transport-related CO2 emissions. The third implication of this research is to elucidate promising avenues for service providers to optimize their fleet operations.
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Examiner: Axhausen, Kay W.
Examiner : Circella, Giovanni
Examiner : Mulley, Corinne
Examiner : Noland, Robert B.
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ETH Zurich
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03521 - Axhausen, Kay W. (emeritus) / Axhausen, Kay W. (emeritus)
02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG
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